The film stars an ensemble cast of Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia, and Vivica A.

Upon its release on July 3, 1996, Independence Day was considered a pivotal moment for the Hollywood blockbuster, leading the resurgence of disaster and science fiction films in the late 1990s.

On July 2, 1996, an extraterrestrial mother ship enters Earth's orbit and deploys saucers, each 15 mi (24 km) in diameter, over major cities worldwide, including Beijing, London, Jerusalem, Delhi and Washington, D.C. U.S. Marine Captain Steven Hiller and his unit, the Black Knights fighter squadron out of MCAS El Toro, are called back from Independence Day leave; his girlfriend, Jasmine Dubrow, decides to flee the city with her son, Dylan.

Retired combat pilot Russell Casse, now an alcoholic single father and crop duster, sees this as vindication of the alien abduction he has been claiming for 10 years.

In New York City, technician David Levinson decodes a signal embedded within global satellite transmissions, realizing it is the aliens' countdown for a coordinated attack.

With help from his ex-wife, White House Communications Director Constance Spano, David and his father Julius reach the Oval Office and alert President Thomas Whitmore.

Whitmore, the Levinsons, and a few others escape aboard Air Force One while Jasmine, Dylan, and their dog Boomer take shelter in a tunnel's inspection alcove, emerging once the destruction is over.

Jasmine and Dylan commandeer a highway maintenance truck and rescue a handful of survivors, including the critically injured First Lady, Marilyn Whitmore.

Emmerich stated he was still fascinated by the idea of an alien arrival, and further explained his response by asking the reporter to imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and to discover 15-mile-wide spaceships were hovering over the world's largest cities.

[9][16] The U.S. military originally intended to provide personnel, vehicles, and costumes for the film; however, they backed out when the producers refused to remove the script's Area 51 references.

[19] The crew also built miniatures for several of the spaceships featured in the film, including a 30-foot (9.1 m) destroyer model[20] and a version of the mother ship spanning 12 feet (3.7 m).

[26] Christopher Weaver, founder of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks consulted with the movie's production team, Centropolis Films, and provided scientific collaboration.

The filmmakers originally intended to use the chroma key technique to make it appear as if an activity was happening on the other side of the glass, but the composited images were not added to the final print because production designers decided the blue panels gave the sets a "clinical look".

[9] The Grammy Award-winning[34] score for the film was composed by David Arnold and recorded with an orchestra of 90, a choir of 46, "and every last ounce of stereotypical Americana he could muster for the occasion".

While Independence Day was still in post-production, Fox began an expensive marketing campaign to help promote the film, beginning with the airing of a dramatic commercial during Super Bowl XXX, for which it paid $1.3 million.

[38] The film's subsequent success at the box office resulted in a trend of using Super Bowl air time to begin the advertising campaigns for potential blockbusters.

The co-marketing project was dubbed "The Power to Save the World" campaign, in which the company used footage of David using his PowerBook 5300 laptop in their print and television advertisements.

[45] It was then screened privately at the White House for President Bill Clinton and his family[46] before receiving a nationwide release in the United States on July 2, 1996, a day earlier than its previously scheduled opening.

The Lebanese Shi'a Islamist militant group Hezbollah called for Muslims to boycott the film, describing it as "propaganda for the so-called genius of the Jews and their concern for humanity."

[53] The film became available on DVD on June 27, 2000, and has since been re-released in several different versions of this format with varying supplemental material, including one instance where it was packaged with a lenticular cover.

[66] During its second day of release, it earned $17.3 million, which made it the highest Thursday gross, holding this record for six years until it was taken by Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones in 2002.

[80] By the end of July 1996, Independence Day had lost 38% of its audience, but it was able to top Ghostbusters, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire and Ghost, becoming the fourteenth-highest domestic grossing film of all time.

The site's critical consensus reads, "The plot is thin and so is character development, but as a thrilling, spectacle-filled summer movie, Independence Day delivers.

[106] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film his highest rating, declaring it the "apotheosis" of comic book space adventure movies.

[94] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt that the film did an "excellent job conveying the boggling immensity of [the] extraterrestrial vehicles […] and panic in the streets" and the scenes of the alien attack were "disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing".

[101] Todd McCarthy of Variety felt the production's budget-conscious approach resulted in "cheesy" shots, lacking the quality of effects in films by James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.

With advancements in CGI special effects, events depicting mass destruction became commonplace in films that soon followed, such as Dante's Peak and Volcano (both in 1997), as well as Deep Impact and Armageddon (both in 1998).

The novel presents the film's finale as originally scripted, with the character played by Randy Quaid stealing a missile and roping it to his cropduster biplane.

[citation needed] On August 4, 1996, BBC Radio 1 broadcast the one-hour play Independence Day UK, written, produced, and directed by Dirk Maggs, a spin-off depicting the alien invasion from a British perspective.

Dean Devlin gave Maggs permission to produce an original version, on the condition that he did not reveal certain details of the movie's plot, and that the British were not depicted as saving the day.